I knew from discussions with other people that Kuwait is a facing water shortage and an electricity shortage. Now I keep hearing more and more, and I know of people where the water has cut off from some houese. So for the past week I have thought just to keep tabs on this and see where it goes, because this is an immediate problem and it will affect our everyday lives.

So the list of areas where people have told me the water has stopped in their houses:

• Bayan
• Dahia Abulla Al Salem
• Qurain
• Surra
• Rawdah
• Misseela
• Fahaheel

Some of those areas are where multiple houses have been affected. Then I read the other day in the newspaper about these water tankers being sold for 20 to 25KD for the whole tank on the black market. Those used to be 3.500KD and 4KD. So that is a drastic jump from what it used to be. But I saw all the water tanks saying they are selling for 5.5KD which still seems reasonable. So what I did for past three days is call the number on a tanker and ask how much a tank was and they always asked me for the area. So twice I mentioned Mishref, once Shuweikh, five times Nuzha, and twice Shamiya. Out of all those phone calls the one from Shuweikh, one from Nuzha, and one from Shamiya qouted me the black market price. This was just calling around and seeing who is doing this! They are doing this so blantantly! Just saying it on the phone, and it doesnt seem like anyone is doing anything about it.

The problem is that our water and electricity facitilities have not been updated since the late 70s or early 80s. And our population has grown two fold with our usage has grown with it. And now we have reached this crisis of water shortage and electrical shortage, with no surplus of either. And it would take another 2 or 3 years to build a water facility or eletrical facility so we will be facing this problem again next year. This is going to be an interesting year or two, I hope they see and find a solution quickly.